BEHIND THE PLATE: Rancatore's Ice Cream runs on love

Thursday

Aug 10, 2017 at 5:00 AMAug 10, 2017 at 1:23 PM

By Abigail Simon lexington@wickedlocal.com

Joe Rancatore greets customers from behind the counter with a jubilant smile and a warm greeting. He helps his staff with everything – from making ice cream to serving it to cleaning up afterwards. He often can be found spending the day at the Lexington storefront, but frequently Rancatore bounces around between his three locations.

Joe accredits his career to both “luck” and “timing.” He first became decided to open his own ice cream store after helping his brother manage Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge. There, he learned the business of ice cream and customer service. Inspired, he opened Rancatore’s Ice Cream in its original Belmont location in 1985, before then expanding to Lexington in 2004 and Newtonville in 2014. All three shops are known for serving unique flavors like bastani sonnati--a traditional Iranian ice cream flavor--or "Tiger Milk," made to taste like the milk left behind after eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes cereal.

Joe’s vision is for Ranc’s, as the shop is known to locals, to resemble the coffee shop from the well-known television show Friends – a central and social location centered around the common enjoyment of something almost everyone loves, ice-cream. He wants each shop to be a spot where friends can meet up, teenagers can hang out, and families can come for dessert. His motto for the business is “Ranc’s Love,” and says he tries to show that love to all his customers and employees.

What do you love about what you do?

Probably the people. Probably that I get to be extremely outgoing. It’s just a constant swirl of humanity and people. I get to do what I love. Owning my own business is something I have a passion for and I’m blessed and lucky that I can just pour time into it. It’s so much fun, I don’t even realize I’m working.

What are your future hopes for Rancatore's?

I’d like to have multiple stores. I have three now, but I always have this vision of five stores with a central commissary location that will do everything for the stores. We’ve started supplying wholesale for other ice cream stores, and I’d like to do more of that – it’s very entertaining and successful and fun.

What are you proudest of about Rancatore's?

That it’s not even just mine. It’s just kind of like this big family that has been built. When I go around and talk about the stores, I never talk about it as "my store" – I gave that up long ago. It’s always "our store." I treat the store as a co-op, not like a business.

What's your favorite item on the menu? Why?

Probably something like a peanut butter Hydrox or coffee Hydrox right now, combined with a dulce de leche – that’s sweetened and condensed milk with cayane pepper and cinnamon. I’ve cut back on eating ice cream, but last night I had a malted chocolate – I love malt – and combined that with Reece’s ice-cream with crushed up Reece’s pieces in it.

What makes Rancatore's better than the competition?

The ice cream’s the star. We make all the ingredients from scratch as much as we can – we don’t like buying off shelf and just adding. So we’re distinctive in that way. We do very unusual flavors: the green tea, the chai, all these dulce de leches, ginger made with fresh ginger – very labor intensive flavors, and it catches the customer’s attention as opposed to very typical flavors. And I think the best thing is the customer service, the way we take care of the customer. That’s what distinguishes us from other ice cream stores, and I always make that our theme.